Even if its kind of irrelevant now it was a good read all the same. It would kind of ruin the whole "escape" aspect of Blizzard games for the rich and famous. I'll be honest though, I'd harass Felecia Day at least once...

Shamus Young:Yes. I wrote this last night. And then two hours before the column went up Blizzard changed its mind.

They did this not because of public outcry, but because they wanted to annoy me.

Its Ok Shamus, it's not your fault Blizzard is giggling at everyone who has put effort into debating this issue, you can't be the only one :)

OT: Nicely said Shamus, although it's a bit inconsequential right now, it's still nice somebody advocating for the little (big) guys out there! So few people actually mention celebrities being harassed as a con, its pretty refreshing is all.

Even more irrelevant for me to comment on it now (and the link you posted has been pulled, so I can't even check my facts) but I thought that the change was only going to be about associating real names with forum posts. That way its not really a privacy issue unless you see the forums as a primary part of what you're paying for out of Blizz's games. I genuinely thought it was a clever way to just get people to stop using their forums at all, so they could stop paying the occasional employee to wander through and read a few drops of the hurricane.

Aww, i almost feel the empathic urge to let your persona exist on my desktop wallpaper for a day at least, so you could get one step closer to that evil Felicia Day. Then again, i suppose it would not be without cons either, since increase in popularity could lead to more invasion of privacy. Oh perfect evil plan that i can hide underneath the cover of good doing.

And a very good article, never personally bothered to use celebrities as an argument in the discussion mostly because majority generally hates celebrities so they make poor 'relate-to' material...

Shamus Young versus John Funk

To be perfectly fair, you can have a friend list without using RealID, and you can use RealId without using Facebook, it's perfectly reasonable to use RealID only with people you trust. The only downside of not using RealID in-game is that you lose cross-game chat.

Also, how is:

Friends will also be able to see what you're playing and even where you are in the game, so don't bother telling your Starcraft-playing friends you're spending the evening delivering baskets of chocolate-covered kittens to orphaned grandmothers if you're just going to be leveling an alt in the Outlands, because your feeble duplicity will be laid bare by Real ID and your friends really hate it when you lie to them like that, jerk

That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

Xocrates:That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

That said, I enjoy that Blizzard decided to back out on this.

Well, Steam doesn't say who I am. So that guy from these forums that randomly got confused into cyberstalking me for about 8 minutes and got to my Steam account through my forum account only knew that I'd play Star Trek Online way too much. Not my given name (I think).

On the subject, I'm a little surprised no one's brought up the potential to bully people using their given name. I took an inordinate amount of shit for my last name in school, and I can't imagine that behavior was exclusive to me (my GF had a similar experience with hers) or that this kind of behavior was limited to just the school playground.

Friends will also be able to see what you're playing and even where you are in the game, so don't bother telling your Starcraft-playing friends you're spending the evening delivering baskets of chocolate-covered kittens to orphaned grandmothers if you're just going to be leveling an alt in the Outlands, because your feeble duplicity will be laid bare by Real ID and your friends really hate it when you lie to them like that, jerk

That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

Steam seriously does this? Wow, one more reason for me to be glad I haven't given in and installed anything requiring Steam! I don't care if it's not using a real name, what and how much I play is no ones' business but my own, and there is no valid reason for that information to be openly available to anyone.

Friends will also be able to see what you're playing and even where you are in the game, so don't bother telling your Starcraft-playing friends you're spending the evening delivering baskets of chocolate-covered kittens to orphaned grandmothers if you're just going to be leveling an alt in the Outlands, because your feeble duplicity will be laid bare by Real ID and your friends really hate it when you lie to them like that, jerk

That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

Steam seriously does this? Wow, one more reason for me to be glad I haven't given in and installed anything requiring Steam! I don't care if it's not using a real name, what and how much I play is no ones' business but my own, and there is no valid reason for that information to be openly available to anyone.

You can set your Steam profile on private which hides all that information.

Friends will also be able to see what you're playing and even where you are in the game, so don't bother telling your Starcraft-playing friends you're spending the evening delivering baskets of chocolate-covered kittens to orphaned grandmothers if you're just going to be leveling an alt in the Outlands, because your feeble duplicity will be laid bare by Real ID and your friends really hate it when you lie to them like that, jerk

That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

Steam seriously does this? Wow, one more reason for me to be glad I haven't given in and installed anything requiring Steam! I don't care if it's not using a real name, what and how much I play is no ones' business but my own, and there is no valid reason for that information to be openly available to anyone.

You can set your profile to private if you don't want people to see that.

Xocrates:That different from what Steam does? Just a quick search on the steam community tells me you were last online 5h20m ago and played Resident Evil 5 34.3h in the past 2 weeks.

That said, I enjoy that Blizzard decided to back out on this.

Well, Steam doesn't say who I am. So that guy from these forums that randomly got confused into cyberstalking me for about 8 minutes and got to my Steam account through my forum account only knew that I'd play Star Trek Online way too much. Not my given name (I think).

True, but I wasn't referring to that side of the issue, but the way friends lists work. As far as I know RealID friends (which is unrelated to the forums, and is still going to happen) wouldn't know more than if you were playing the game on Steam.

To be fair to the realid system, its all opt-in, you still have the regular wow friends list thats all anonymous, and realid is just another layer on top of that, its not like it emails your boss automatically that you played wow for 18 hours yesterday and slept it off in the backoffice. The furore was really about the fact it would show your real name on the forums, which blizzard thought was an insta cure for smacktards. Of course the forgot about all the obvious downsides.

Your daughter could be scarred for life when she sees that you actually missed her piano recital because you were raiding instead of because her playing is horrendous.

That was mean, Shamus. XD

Anyway, I completely agree with you and I actually thought of famous people regarding this topic as well. Celebrities deserve some privacy too, including gaming. Fortunately, they have reversed their decision.

Anyway, I hope Funk changes his article so that he speaks of privacy in gaming/internet in general. I feel like in this craze of "social networking services", the privacy aspect is being increasingly neglected....and it leaves me with a great feeling of unease.

And I have to say I'm on your side in this... I just can't imagine this RealID scheme turning out well. I'm not sure what will actually happen, but it gives the same feeling as Ubisoft's DRM scheme, that they have simply given up trying to compromise.

And even if this ends up as a disaster (I certainly won't let them put up my name, no matter how little I have to hide), they have probably invested too much money into this now to just give up on it.

Shamus Young:Yes. I wrote this last night. And then two hours before the column went up Blizzard changed its mind.

They did this not because of public outcry, but because they wanted to annoy me.

You and Funk both.

I honestly think the Escapist Staff should encourage Funk to write his stance of supporting the RealID system(if he truly supports the move and not just playing devil's advocate). The reason for this is very simple, it is one of the few times that editors can actually discuss about topics that actually not only have an impact on the video game industry but also the future of the internet when it comes to privacy, public domain and property.

Where someone in the video game industry can actually perform journalism by making calls to companies for direct statements and probe questions to find out who specifically caused Blizzard to back up from RealID, why they backed up and what were their real goals by implementing RealID into the forums and where Blizzard would of taken off should RealID actually be implemented. Would there be any partnerships with Facebook or Amazon?

I say that Funk should publish his article not to hear both sides but to truly explore the paths we as people and we as video gamers decide how our voice can both be a positive and a negative that affects the business of the video game industry.

So I say that we as a community should encourage Funk to publish his article and not let something of such magnitude go out with a whimper but with the rightful bang that only a goblin zapper can match.

There may be 0 Shamus Young desktops out there, but I am willing to bet that there an far more Shamus Young made Screen Savers than Felica Day made Screen Savers. That Procedural City screen saver is my favorite one ever.